Well, Endeca finally got around to announcing Endeca Latitude. The software has been around since December, but the company apparently figured they'd get a bigger splash if they announced it at Esther Dyson's PC Forum. (Having met Esther a number of years ago, I understand the thinking. And boy, does she enjoy fresh cherry tomatoes. But that's another post.)
I wrote about Endeca Latitude in a January Briefing Note (warning: the full text is only accessible to Ballardvale Research clients, but you can read the summary here). Latitude is a query front end to both unstructured and unstructured data. Its beauty is that workers that can't be bothered to learn a business intelligence application (e.g., Business Objects, Cognos) can probably find the information they're looking for via the Latitude portal.
As I note in the Briefing Note conclusions,
Endeca’s Latitude is one example of the quiet revolution occurring in online information retrieval. In the past, BI applications and portals were the engines of choice, largely because structured data was accessible online and unstructured data (memos stored in file cabinets) wasn’t. However, almost all corporate data is now created digitally -- via Microsoft Word or Excel, or in e-mail -- so structured and unstructured data are now equally available. Going forward, the information retrieval winner will be the application that can mine both data types equally well -- and so far, enterprise search companies such as Endeca have done a more even-handed job than their BI counterparts. Companies should not necessarily de-install their BI applications -- but they should investigate search as a way to make BI and other corporate information much more accessible to large numbers of employees.
My more in-depth musings on the subject reside in my December 2004 DMReview.com column. No matter how you slice it, information retrieval is going to get easier in the coming year.
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